Piano Quintet in B minor, Op. 40

Dora Pejačević (1885 – 1923) is one of the most talentet female composers at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. She studied at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb then briefly in Dresden with Sherwood and in Munich with Courvoisier. For the most part, however, she was self-taught and developed her musical talents through contact with other artists and intellectuals, such as Karl Kraus. Her ancestral home was at Našice (near Osijek), but she also travelled extensively to Budapest, Munich, Prague and Vienna. After 1921 she lived mainly in Munich. Her works were performed most frequently outside Croatia; part of her Symphony, for example, was first given in Vienna (25 January 1918) and the complete work was performed later in Dresden. Her late Romantic idiom, enriched with Impressionist harmonies and lush orchestral colours, evolved as she strove to break free from drawing-room mannerisms and conventions... The Quintet for Two Violins, Viola, Violoncello and Piano in B Minor, Op. 40 (1915 – 1918) is one of the peaks in Dora Pejačević’s chamber music. Its composition occupied her for an extended period of time, simultaneously with the Slavic Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 43, and with the Symphony, so their similarity of style and expression are understandable, as is the composer’s desire to create, from time to time, a “Slavic” atmosphere in these works. This is expressed primarily in the character of the main themes of the first and last (fourth) movements and their modal “Russian” tone. The rich thematic work, the inclination to polyphony and unification of the thematic material are the characteristics of both this work and the String Quartet Op. 58, the Symphony and the Phantasie concertante, and are marks of Pejačević's late style. (Koraljka Kos)